Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He was also awarded the prize for "The emerging writer of the year - 2016" in the Godage National Literary Awards, Sri Lanka for his first collection of poems (Kite Dreams – A Sarasavi Publication), while being shortlisted for the poetry prize. Dilantha is a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and Australia, and shares his experiences from two different cultures. He blogs at - https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/

Tag: nostalgia

The long day, just got longer,
The chin too narrowed,
And claimed a little more of the curved edge.
This was after my trip into nostalgia,
Stopped somewhere in the mid afternoon.
There is nothing one can do
When nostalgia abruptly comes to a stand-still.
Nostalgia is not always
A tear-dropping handkerchief-wetting
Moment of careless pedigree,
No, sometimes, you are staring at the fog
Of light, we call the sun, taking notes of happenings
Around you. Still a foot, an eye or a rib
In the past is not always a bad thing.
Looking back, is solving those mysteries
Of the heart, which are just like,
Smarties or jellybeans, coming
Color-coded. The darkest being
The most ominous. And still we open
A pack, listening to Jon Secada
Singing “Just another day”,
But it rarely is. Its like unfolding
A pancake to find what the filler
Is – savory or sweet. And in that flat epiphany
You will start to believe that
All this bother, to recollect,
Is just an age-stamped edition
Of groping in retrospection.
And in that lesson of torment,
You haunt yourself with the past you,
And all you do at the end, is chase ghosts
Of the pasts, just to give you an
Extra zap, like a heart-quenching
Scooby snack.

Staring at the rim
Of a glass of rum and coke
Where temptation is a ball full of eye
And taste, heaven on tongue tip
As the glass rose and the lips lowered
There was only enough room for saliva and carbon dioxide
To crash in to each other – on the meniscus
When melancholia drowned in firewater
And the vapor of nostalgia saturated the heart
As for a demi-hour, memory lane
Was a promenade of an inebriated chamber
When footsteps tiptoed through the mist
To find a sediment of love
As a vestigial fossil